subject: Detroit Lions Tickets : The Lions And Wxyt Am/fm Renewed Their Partnership For Three More Seasons [print this page] The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL), and play their home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.
Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and called the Portsmouth Spartans, the team began play in 1929 as an independent professional team,one of many such teams in the Ohio and Scioto River valleys. For the 1930 season, the Spartans formally joined the NFL as the other area independents folded because of the Great Depression. Despite success within the NFL, they could not survive in Portsmouth, then the NFL's smallest city. The team was purchased and moved to Detroit for the 1934 season.
The Lions have won four NFL Championships, the last in 1957, giving the club the second-longest NFL championship drought behind the Arizona Cardinals. The Lions are one of four current NFL teams that have yet to qualify for the Super Bowl. The 2008 team became the only team in NFL history to lose all 16 regular season games.The Lions' flagship radio stations are WXYT-FM, 97.1 FM, and WXYT-AM, 1270 AM.
Dan Miller does play-by-play, Jim Brandstatter does color commentary, and Tony Ortiz provides sideline reports.If a conflict with Detroit Tigers or Detroit Red Wings coverage arises, only WXYT-FM serves as the Lions' flagship. The Lions and WXYT AM/FM renewed their partnership for three more seasons on Octobe009.WXYZ-TV is the flagship station Lions preseason games.[6] The announcers are Matt Shepard with play-by-play, Rob Rubick with color commentary, and Tom Leyden with sideline reports.
Regular season games are broadcast regionally on Fox, except when the Lions play an AFC team in Detroit, in which case the game airs regionally on CBS. The Thanksgiving Classic game in Detroit is always televised nationally on either Fox or CBS, depending on who the visiting team is. The Detroit Lions are the only NFC team that hasn't yet played on NBC when they got the NFL back in 2006.The Lions' official regular season pregame show is The Ford Lions Report.For regular season games versus NFC opponents when Fox doesn't have a double header, WJBK produces a live postgame show.
The Lions' winless performance in 2008 and 2/14 season in 2009, coupled with the effects of the Late-2000s recession in Michigan, led to several local broadcast blackouts, as local fans did not purchase enough tickets by the 72-hour blackout deadline. In 2008, five of the Lions' final six home games of the season did not sell out, with the Thanksgiving game being the exception.
The first blackout in the seven-year history of Ford Field was on October 26, 2008, against the Washington Redskins. The previous 50 regular season home games had been sellouts. The second home game of the 2009 season in which the Lions broke the losing streak was blacked out locally, as well as the comeback victory over the Cleveland Browns.Games were also often blacked out at the Lions' previous home, the 80,000-seat Pontiac Silverdome, despite winning seasons and the success and popularity of Barry Sanders.
